There’s something so vague about Mrs Graham, something so detached, the view out of her living room window, across all the trees and rooftops of town, feels strangely appropriate, like she’s a balloon and someone let go of her string.
‘Wow!’ I say, putting my bags down. ‘That’s quite a view!’
‘Is it?’ she says. ‘I suppose you’re right.’
She sits neatly in her armchair and waits for me to begin.
She’s watching gymnastics on the television with the sound on mute. A female gymnast flic flacs across the mat in the floor exercise, lands, arches her spine, throws her arms high and wide in showy gestures, then takes a couple of sprung skips and hurls herself back in the other direction.
I explain to Mrs Graham who I am and what the visit is for. She listens to me carefully, but she obviously has no idea, no recollection of having been in the hospital, let alone being brought home by the Red Cross just about an hour ago.
Quite how she’s able to live alone like this I’m not sure. She has carers four times a day, and her daughters live at various points around the city, but hour to hour? It’s a mystery. Environmentally the flat is as safe and hazard free as it’s possible to be. There are no immediate trip hazards, things are neatly squared away, the medication in a locked box. My notes say that the cooker is disconnected, there’s a stairgate to discourage her from going downstairs, there are notes taped to various doors with simple instructions – but with such a poor level of recall or understanding, I can’t imagine how she gets by. She was admitted to hospital with a chest infection and not a fall, though, so that’s some reassurance I suppose.
The gymnasts have moved on to the asymmetric bars. A different competitor has just smacked chalk on her hands, acknowledged the start with a hyperflexed gesture, then thrown herself with a half twist through the air to skip across the bars and begin spinning and curling and doubling back.
I ask Mrs Graham what she used to do before she retired.
‘A biochemist. I’m Dutch, originally. I met my husband just after the war and came to England to work. It was a long time ago,’ she says, staring back at the TV. ‘I was a dancer, too,’ she says, without breaking her gaze. ‘There’s a picture of me over there…’
She gestures behind her without looking. I go over to see – and there she is, a young woman en pointe, arms arched delicately above her head, a headdress of white flowers, a tutu. She’s looking wistfully off into the distance stage left, which – given where the picture is hanging – is pretty much directly at where she’s sitting now.
‘Lovely’ I say.
‘Thank you,’ she says, then gives a little flinch as the gymnast tumbles through the air at the end of her routine, lands a little off-balance, puts a foot out to recover, draws it back when she’s found centre again, straightens, acknowledges the crowd, then strides off.